As I indicated above, the notion of reason has a central place in the legitimating pattern of much of conventional liberal thought. In Rawls’s and Scanlon’s models, an universalist conception of what it means to be rational and reasonable is crucial for the arguments for the universal validity of liberal political institutions. It embraces both a conception of what is rational for a person to want for herself – like the Rawlsian notion of primary goods, and freely chosen life plans; and what is reasonable in her relationship to the others who have their own – but essentially similar – rational pursuits (Rawls 1972, 90-95; 407-416). As I will discuss below, the strong universalism implicit in the conventional liberal theories is a major object of criticism posed against the legitimating capacity of the justificatory arguments of those models. Universalist arguments are usually criticized either because of the anthropological assumptions contained in the notion of what can be universally wanted, rejected or avoided. The moral-egalitarian and legalist universalism, on which Dworkin bases his notion of legitimacy, is a less obvious target of criticism of universalism than Rawls’s rationalist view, because it is explicitly based on a normative view of political morality rather than on a claim of objective rationality;
but as I indicate in part II, radical democratic and postmodern skepticism toward moral arguments in politics expressed in the context of a growing moral, legal and political relativism also puts these tenets under question (see e. g. Brown 2004 and Mouffe 2005). Thus, arguments in favor of the political universalism of liberal democracy need to be presented in less metaphysical terms, and to appeal more consistently to democratic political values, if they are to be taken seriously in the debates on democratic legitimacy.
In order to comprehend more thoroughly the meaning of universalism in political theory, Seyla Benhabib’s division of universalism to four different levels is helpful.
Benhabib, herself a proponent of a “deliberative” model of democracy introduced in the following chapter, a critic of certain interpretations of conventional liberal theory and still a proponent of moral and legal universalism, makes a distinction between first, philosophical or metaphysical universalism; second, rational universalism as a justification strategy based on a faith in the universality of a certain notion of impartial critical reason; third, moral universalism: the principle that all human beings are to be considered as moral equals and entitled to equal moral respect; and
forth, legal universalism, the principle of equality before the law and equal legal rights for all. According to her, legal and moral universalism is endorsed by many theorists who do not subscribe to any versions of philosophical essentialism contained in the metaphysical levels of universalism. Some of them, she argues, also take distance from universalist notions of rationality, claiming that all justificatory strategies and pretenses of objectivity are products of particular cultural contexts.
Benhabib agrees that moral and legal universalism in the above sense does not presume a metaphysical notion of an universal “human nature”, thus confirming that political universalism can be separated from strong metaphysical claims of universal truth. At the same time she is suspicious about the possibility of separating moral and legal universalism from some universalist notion of critical rationality, because in her view legal and moral universalism may be hard to defend without a “strong commitment to the normative content of reason,” meaning critical rationality as a justificatory device. (Benhabib 2002, 26-28.)
This division of universalism to separate levels is helpful to clarify the appeal of some aspects of universalist arguments in the light of the sometimes relevant, sometimes arguably exaggerated feminist, postmodern and radical democratic critique posed against universalism as such in political argumentation. It also helps to conceptualize the relationship between the universalism of individual rights and egalitarianism as a democratic norm – a relationship that is seen, particularly within feminist theory, as more complicated than the conventional liberal visions of rights and equality reveal (see chapter III). To summarize the arguments introduced in this section, it is helpful to recognize the different levels of universalism present in the Rawlsian justification model. As I indicated above, Rawls’s theory of justice is universalist first in the legal and moral sense that the “two principles of justice” and the rules, laws and decisions made in accordance with them apply equally to all members of the given polity; but also in a different, more profound sense, presenting a concept of “primary goods” that are universally wanted by every reasonable and rational person in any social and political context – a view based on assumptions about human nature that reach the metaphysical level of universalism, although Rawls denies that his theory has ambitions of stating a metaphysical truth.
The legal and moral universalism of the application of principles is based on some of the most foundational assumptions of political liberalism, like the Enlightenment ideal of the equal moral worth of all persons regardless of their personal characteristics and social position; and the ideal of personal autonomy that
follows from that ideal. That ideal is also followed by Dworkin; and it is, at some level, widely endorsed in current liberal democracies. As this research confirms, it is explicitly or implicitly also endorsed by most proponents of deep and radical democracy. The epistemological level contained in Rawls’s construction of the Original Position is philosophically more intriguing; as the anonymous contractor is envisioned as anyone capable of making rational decisions, the assumption behind the vision is that any rational person, whatever his or her particular identity and social position turns out to be in reality, would reckon in the same way and come to the same conclusions about the two principles of justice insofar as he or she thinks rationally. The universally valid rational impartiality of the principles is allegedly guaranteed by removing all particular qualities and interests of the fictional contractors, but the assumption remains that anybody who could think objectively and rationally on behalf of everybody would deduce and legitimize the same institutional arrangements. (Rawls 1972, 118-161; Young 1990, 107-116.)
A central question to be discussed in the debate that follows is whether this strong conception of universal reason is necessary to defend liberal democratic politics. As I will indicate below, although Benhabib argues that the moral and legal universalism of liberal democracy is connected to some account of universal critical rationality (meaning, in Benhabib’s interpretation, that not all arguments are strictly context-dependent in the sense that they cannot be seen as equally valid in different cultural and historical contexts), her own account of such critical rationality is more flexible and open than the Rawlsian version (Benhabib 1992, 3-7; 2002, 26-42). The conventional liberal model, and particularly the vision of the Original Position as an abstractly rationalist hypothetical foundation process, has been criticized by communitarian, feminist and radical democratic theorists for its overt abstractness and for failing to reflect the actuality of real-life social and political scenes, because in practice political debates inevitably take place between people who are aware of, and conditioned by, their actual social positions (see e.g. Young 1990, 102-107).
The dilemmatic aspect of the position of universalist arguments is that while much of the criticism of the more or less rigidly universalist conventional liberal models is well founded, many (albeit not all) of the critics themselves endorse at least implicitly the principles of moral universalism, without which their often strongly egalitarian arguments would make no sense. The question is, can egalitarianism as a morally universalist position be defended without a reference to
epistemological universalism and appeals to universal rationality? How strong must the argument for “rationality” be to resist relativist and communitarian objections to the universal individualism of political liberalism; or alternatively, how weak should the notion of reasonableness become in order to be able to accommodate the real-life diversity of not only social identities and political opinions, but also of discursive styles; without still equating all arguments without any selective qualification?
With regard to liberal universalism, it will be studied in the proceeding chapters: 1) which aspects of conventional liberal universalism remain vulnerable to criticism from democratic and egalitarian point of view (what is “wrong” with liberal, rationalist universalism); 2) to which extent the alternative models of democracy and feminist theoretical approaches that are critical toward some aspects of liberal universalism, remain themselves true to some universalist ideals; 3) what is the relationship between the different interpretations of universalist egalitarianism – does universalism have to lead to essentialism and homogenization, or alternatively, to abstract and detached individualism, as some critics claim; and 4) what would be the implications of giving up the liberal universalist ideals altogether for the sake of deeper democratic legitimacy? For now, I will refer to another central feature of the conventional liberal model of legitimation: the separation between “the right” and
“the good”, the public and the private, and justice and morality.